The present invention relates to data storage, and more particularly, to automatically migrating data from one target storage system to a new target storage system while maintaining disaster recovery consistency.
Using conventional data storage systems, in the context of a data replication relationship, there is no automated way to migrate data from multiple target volumes, simultaneously, to other volumes while maintaining disaster recovery capability. There are instances during normal operation when the migration of a disaster recovery configuration to higher performing storage subsystems for improved performance or to upgrade an environment with new hardware would be beneficial. A completely automated migration to address these situations does not currently exist.
Instead, currently, the process involves manual steps which are time consuming, error prone, and could potentially result in some data loss. This can be even more difficult when using a copy services solution that provides managed consistency across multiple copy relationship pairings because, generally, the need to switch volumes will only affect a few of the pairings within that consistency group/session.
In order to perform the migration manually, the user would first have to remove the copy pairings for the relationships from the session and terminate the relationships on the hardware. Then, the user would have to re-establish a new relationship between the original source volumes and the new target volumes and wait for all of the data to be copied over. In order to maintain the integrity of the consistency group/session, this would have to be done outside of the consistency group/session and then added back in once the volumes reach full duplex. Of course, during this prolonged process there is no data consistency across the entire consistency group/session.
Therefore, a storage solution which automates the migration of data from one target storage system to a new target storage system while maintaining disaster recovery consistency would be beneficial.